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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14124
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| Title: | IT Driven Automation: The New Wave |
| Authors: | Tuzhilin, Alex |
| Issue Date: | Nov-2004 |
| Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
| Series/Report no.: | CeDER-04-10 |
| Abstract: | There has been much discussion in the press about productivity
improvements that grew at an annual rate of 3.55% from 2000 to 2003
[BW04]. One of the sources of this productivity growth is automation. We
have all witnessed numerous ways in which companies have automated their
business processes over the past decade. As a recent example, The Dallas
Morning News reports in [Baj04] how Atmos Energy, the Dallas-based gas
company, is automating its gas meter reading capabilities by using
wireless technologies and thus reducing its staff by 225 employees over
the next five years. In this article, we will examine current trends in
the technology-driven automation and will argue that we are still in the
early stages of a new wave of automation that will profoundly affect the
economy and will significantly contribute to the productivity growth
over the next 10 â 15 years. Industrial automation is an old
phenomenon that goes back to the Industrial Revolution when machines
replaced physical labor on a massive scale. Automation profoundly
affected manufacturing over the past 25 years when industrial robots
replaced various manual jobs in different spheres of manufacturing,
including automobiles, computers and telecommunication equipment. More
recently, automation was primarily driven by IT. For example, toll booth
collectors recently became victims of IT-based automation when some of
them lost their jobs to EZ-Pass technologies. Similarly, 225 employees
at Atmos Energy will lose their jobs within the next 5 years due to the
advancements in wireless technologies [Baj04]. Also, many cashiers in
department stores and supermarkets will soon lose their jobs because of
the advancements of the RFID tag technologies. Most of the jobs lost to
automation have been routine production jobs, according to the job
classification proposed by Robert Reich in [Rei91]. The main
characteristics of these jobs are repetitiveness and structuredness
since they have well defined procedural job descriptions. Examples of
these jobs include assembly line workers, foremen, data processors, and
toll collectors. The routine production jobs have been replaced by
mechanical, electrical and IT-driven machines, including industrial
robots and wireless communication devices. In this article, we claim
that the next waive of automation will affect not only routine
production workers, but also what Reich calls symbolic-analytic workers
[Rei91], such as engineers, office and knowledge workers, managers,
educators, and other groups of âmind workers.â Although
few of these jobs will be eliminated completely, many of the more
routine tasks in these jobs will be delegated to âsmart
machinesâ within the next 10 â 15 years, leading to
major restructuring and consolidation of some of these jobs. This
phenomenon is examined in the rest of this article. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14124 |
| Appears in Collections: | CeDER Working Papers
IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers
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